Friday 12 April 2024

 A most agreeable day today.  It has been very warm and I was pleased to sit outside at lunchtime in the warm Spring sunshine.  Here I am, savouring the warm rays, while - if you can spot it - the first pretty butterfly of the year rests on the wall behind me...

I have accompanied Roo to work in one of her office places twice this week, where I have done my utmost to be a good boy.  Roo says that this is where she used to take Jasper and Gisele, and where they had lots of adventures that they barked about on here. (Here it begins - Jasper's first day at work: Link).

I listened with interest to the tales of Ewan and Fizzy, their adventures with Jasper and subsequently with Gisele.  I walked down the oft-trod bridleway, where once they played with Ewan's football.  I don't know what a football is.  We walked past the badger sett, still active and now so enlarged as to be partially fenced-off for public safety.  But I have no wish to tally with a badger in its own home.

Miss Roo says the echoes of happy times are all around us there, in the scent of the flowers, the breeze in the trees, the chirruping of the birds and the gentle buzz of the insects.  She says that we will make all new adventures there - but just us. There are no others there now.  But the woods will forever be the place that made memories, preserved in text and pixels here, if you care to seek them out.

I won't have the same stories and adventures like Jasper, or Gisele.  But I hope the ones I make will not be dull for being different.  After all - I have already involved myself in a significant scrape involving the military, many shenanigans and the concealment of an entire chicken curry in Roo's pants.

Unimpressed at the military's red flag flying on my return to Dartmoor - 

it surely can't just have been for me, can it?! ("He's BACK!! Go, lads, go!!")

And I've only been here for a year.  Surely this holds promise for future adventures?

I have already had cause to speak sternly again to a red kite at Abbotstone, just the one this time, but he followed my progress from the air a little too closely.  I have warned him that I know what he is about, and that he ought to examine his conscience.  He just stared at me. Hmmm.

When first we arrived at Roo's workplace, and location of many tales of glory (and some not quite SO glorious...), the door was propped open.  Upon closing it, a really rather remarkable sight was there to behold. Muddy marks from long, long ago, which have withstood the elements and the years (the door is behind shutters, so somewhat protected from the ravages of time).  Little stamps that echo the barks and playful yelps of those who capered in the yard so long ago now, but which seem as fresh as when they were first laid new:

The paw-prints of Ewan, Fizzy - and Jasper.

Good evening to you.